Enric Sala, the renowned Girona, Catalonia born-and-raised oceanographer, marine conservationist and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, hadn’t intended to seize the spotlight during a Zoom call last week with TV reviewers, but there it was.
Sala’s documentary Pristine Seas: The Power of Protection, a semi-biographical account of his lifelong campaign to persuade world leaders to set aside vast stretches of ocean as marine protection zones, makes its global debut Monday on NatGeo WILD.
And while other marine researchers and National Geographic filmmakers were in on the call, when someone asked Sala if the oceans are in as much trouble as some scientists — Sala included — say they are, he rose to the bait.
“Just last week there was a scientific study that shows the ocean has become really noisy, because of our activities,” Sala said. “Seismic testing and boats and the noise from ports — all the noise we are making underwater — is making it very, very difficult for whales and other creatures in the ocean to be able to communicate, to be able to reproduce, to be able to survive. Our impact is huge.”
Sala grew up on Spain’s Costa Brava coast, where he developed a lifelong passion for the sea. He earned a Bachelor of Science (Biology) from the University of Barcelona, and followed that with a Ph.D in ecology from the University of Aix-Marseille in France.
He went on to become a professor in his own right, taught at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in La Jolla, Calif. Five years later, he moved back to Spain, where he was appointed director of marine conservation and ecology — the first person to hold that post — for Spain’s National Council for Scientific Research (CSIC).
Sala felt unfulfilled though. While at Scripps he established the Scripps’ Center for Marine Biodiversity and Conservation.
“What I was doing was simply writing the obituary of the ocean,” he says now. He felt he needed to do more.
He changed course, and became a crusader for the environment rather than a witness after-the-fact. He was inspired in large part by National Geographic Explorer Mike Fay’s groundbreaking MegaTransect of the Congo Basin in 1998 and ‘99 — an expedition that took Fay 465 days to cut his way through 3,200 kms (2,000 miles) of equatorial rainforest.
The distance covered and the discoveries made along the way wasn’t what struck Sala, though.
What struck Sala was that Fay’s expedition convinced then-president Omar Bongo of Gabon to establish 13 national parks. It wasn’t just about adventure, in other words. It was about conserving what was left.
Sala thought, why not do the same for the world’s oceans?
Sala was named a National Geographic Fellow in 2008, where he initiated the Pristine Seas project, a global program to explore, map, document and protect the last wild places in the ocean.
His partner in the project, James Cameron (yes, that James Cameron), was appointed a National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence in 2011. Since then the two have campaigned hard on behalf of the world’s oceans.
Fast-forward 10 years. To date, the Pristine Seas initiative has helped establish 6 million square kms (2.3 million square miles) of marine protected area. That may seem a lot but it is by no means enough, Sala says.
“Today, only seven percent of the ocean worldwide is protected from fishing, oil, drilling, mining and other damaging activities. The science is telling us we need at least 30% of the ocean protected by 2030.
“The good news is that we know that when we give space to the ocean, the ocean comes back spectacularly, marine life returns. The ocean has this amazing resilience, this amazing ability to come back.
“In the last ten years, as you can see with our Pristine Seas film, we have worked with local communities and governments to protect 23 of the largest marine areas in the ocean, covering twice the size of India. And some of these places are still pristine, (which means) you jump in the water and you are immediately surrounded by sharks.
“Other areas are not so pristine. But we see that after a few years, fish and other species can come back. We don't have enough of the ocean protected, but what we have seen in the last ten years gives us hope.”
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